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" I was immersed in popular songs of the time, of the '30s and '40s. I was writing songs, making fun of the attitudes of those songs, in the musical style of the songs themselves; love songs, folk songs, marches, football. "

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" One of the things I'm proudest of is, on my record 'That Was the Year that Was' in 1965, I made a joke about spending $20 billion sending some clown to the moon. I was against the manned space program then, and I'm even more against it now, that whole waste of money. "

Tom Lehrer

Now

Space

Clown

" When you get to fifty-two food becomes more important than sex. "

" Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. "

" The Army has carried the American ideal to its logical conclusion. Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on ability. "

" I have always found it interesting... that there are people who regard copyright infringement as a form of flattery. "

" Irreverence is easy - what's hard is wit. "

" I thought about majoring in Math, Chemistry and English, but Math had the fewest requirements, so I went with it. I knew I wanted to teach, and Math was my field, so I studied Math. "

" I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them. "

" When you're in a public profession like I was, and you stop doing it like I did, people think you're either crazy or dead. "

" The people who were in college in the '50s were my first real audience, and their kids, the people who found my records in the cabinet during their 'Mad 'magazine years picked me up also. "

Tom Lehrer

Audience

College

" There's something mathematically satisfying about music: notes fit together and harmony and all that. And mathematics has to do with abstractions and making connections. "

" On my income tax 1040 it says 'Check this box if you are blind.' I wanted to put a check mark about three inches away. "

" In my youth there were words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can't say 'girl.' "

" I always prided myself on at least trying to be literate and use the right words, and if the audience didn't get it, then they could go home and look it up. "

" The real issues I don't think most people touch. The Clinton jokes are all about Monica Lewinsky and all that stuff and not about the important things, like the fact that he wouldn't ban landmines. "

" I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up. "

" It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years. "

" I stopped performing because I don't have the temperament of a performer. You have to want to do the same thing over and over again. Once I got it right, I didn't want to do it again. I always use the analogy of a novelist who has to read his novel in public night after night. I just didn't want to do it. "

" I loved high school, but I wouldn't want to do it again. "

" San Francisco is a city of twenty-something millionaire white kids named Doug. "

" Be prepared, and be careful not to do your good deeds when there's no one watching you. "

" I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up. "

Tom Lehrer

Person

Shut Up

" When I was in college, there were certain words you couldn't say in front of a girl. Now you can say them, but you can't say 'girl.' "

" My last public performance for money was in 1967. For free, it was 1972, with the exception of two little one-shot, one-song things. But that's just for friends, out of friendship for the people involved, and also because it was fun. "

" Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal, if you don't use your thumbs. "

" Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize. "

" Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it. "

Tom Lehrer

Life

Piano

" Bad weather always looks worse through a window. "

" Laughter is involuntary. If it's funny you laugh. "

" I went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity. "